Bombs Across the Ocean?

By Ed Magnuson

How long is the reach of foreign terrorists? For years the FBI as well as private U.S. experts has offered a soothing answer: while Americans abroad are vulnerable, there is little danger at home. But last week Oliver Revell, the FBI's second ranking official, told a congressional subcommittee that a "hard core" of 300 among the more than 10,000 Iranians who have come to the U.S. as students bear careful watching. Some, he said, are members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard whose real interests are far from academic.

Two days after Revell's warning in Washington, Sharon Rogers, wife of U.S. Navy Captain Will Rogers III, was driving alone through San Diego on her way to her job as a schoolteacher. As her white Toyota van was stopped for a red light, a bomb exploded from underneath. Just before the vehicle burst into flames, Mrs. Rogers jumped out, shaken but unharmed. The van was gutted by the blast. Shards of metal had pierced its roof, barely missing her head. The significance of the bomb, which may have been triggered by remote control, almost certainly lay with Captain Rogers. He is commander of the U.S.S. Vincennes, the guided-missile cruiser that shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf last July 3, killing all 290 people aboard. Rogers gave the order to fire missiles at the plane in the mistaken belief that it was an Iranian jet fighter attacking his ship.

The FBI and naval investigators rushed to the Rogers' home in San Diego to check for other explosives. Guards were assigned to Captain and Mrs. Rogers, who went into hiding. They had received anonymous death threats shortly after the airliner tragedy. In July, Mrs. Rogers got a threatening call from someone she thought sounded Middle Eastern. "Are you the wife of the murderer?" the caller asked. When the Vincennes returned to its San Diego port in October, the ship's crew was ordered to be on alert for possible attacks when off the ship.

If the bomb was intended as retribution for the Iran Airbus tragedy, it was probably not the first such act of revenge. Various Iranian groups claimed, and investigators now widely assume, that the explosive device that blew up Pan Am's Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December was also a retaliatory strike. That resulted in the death of 270 people, mostly Americans. The prevailing theory among investigators is that the plan to destroy Flight 103 originated among Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Other evidence that interlocked terrorist groups are growing bold enough to strike in the U.S. came last April. Yu Kikumura, identified by federal prosecutors as a member of the Japanese Red Army, was arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike with pipe bombs designed to injure humans rather than damage buildings. He carried maps pinpointing targets in New York City. Prosecutors claimed his intended attack would have occurred on the second anniversary of the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya. For unsuspecting Americans, the battle against international terrorism may be coming close to home.